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BORN in Walham Green in 1939, 600 yards from Stamford Bridge, I was the only Chelsea fan in my family. Everybody else supported Fulham. As a child I often went to Chelsea, and I remember, just after the second world war ended, my dad taking me to watch the famous Moscow Dynamo team, along with 80,000 other people.

Like most kids, I grew up wanting to be like the centre-forwards of our day, the ones who grabbed all the headlines, and when Roy Bentley moved to west London from Newcastle in January 1948, he became a hero in my young mind. He was England’s centre-forward at the 1950 World Cup and everything he did on the pitch showed you why. Not only was he an outstanding, brave player, but he scored many goals. Remarkably, he was rarely used by England, despite scoring nine goals in 12 matches for his country.